Sprinklr Buys Branderati, Third Acquisition In A Year

Another
day, another acquisition for Sprinklr. On Wednesday, the social media management firm said it scooped up social services provider Branderati. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

With the word-of-mouth specialists at Branderati, Sprinklr now has more than 500 employees on its payroll. The deal marks Sprinklr’s third acquisition in less than a year.

Last month,
the company agreed to buy social marketing veteran TBG Digital. The addition was expected to give its clients a clearer picture of cross-channel media spends and paid media in particular.

Earlier this year, Sprinklr picked up Dachis Group and its social analytics and optimization technology. Dachis’s social consulting practice was also added to Sprinklr’s services
enablement practice. At the time of the deal, Sprinklr CEO Ragy Thomas estimated that it would have taken 12 to 15 months to build offerings comparable to Dachis’.

Sprinklr presently
boasts more than 650 enterprise brands, including GM, Virgin America, Samsung and Microsoft, and processes more than $100 million in annual media spend.

Consolidation in the social marketing
space is a no-brainer, say analysts. Over the next year or two, social-media management firms -- including technology vendors and agencies -- will shrink from roughly 200 to less than 24, Mukul
Krishna, digital media industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan, said earlier this year.

Other notable tie-ups in the space include Lithium Technologies’ agreement to buy Klout for a
reported $200 million, and, more recently, Mass Relevance merging with Spredfast.

More broadly, Forrester Research has predicted that social media will have the highest cumulative aggregate
growth rate across all channels through 2014.

Last November, Sprinklr completed a $17.5 million Series C funding round led by Battery Ventures and Intel Capital. With the raise, the company
then set out to add another 100 employees by mid-to-late 2014, and continue its international expansion.

Unimpressed by Sprinklr's acquisition spree, the head of a rival social-media
management firm said it is merely buying up “dead companies” -- or those without much potential on their own -- in order to bulk up ahead of a likely IPO. The executive asked not to have
his name included in this story.